Posted on 07/18/2018 10:35:54 AM PDT by OddLane
The mayor of Mount Dora, Florida, will have to publicly apologize Wednesday afternoon for his city's overzealous code enforcement that targeted a home painted in the likeness of Vincent van Gogh's masterpiece, "Starry Night."
More importantly, the city will remove a lien against the property and drop more than $10,000 in fines it had issued to the husband and wife who own the home, according to a settlement approved unanimously by the city council Tuesday night. The Orlando Sentinel reports that the settlement also includes the payment of $15,000 to homeowners Lubomir Jastrzebski and his wife, Nancy Nemhauser.
The couple's colorful home became the subject of national media attention and legal scrutiny last year when city officials deemed the elaborately painted mural covering a wall in front of the house to be "graffiti" and ordered the couple to remove it...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
We live less than a mile away - and we love it! It really helps identify the town as an artist community (a local artists lives across the street from us.) The City Council has been a laughing stock from the beginning. They have no imagination, and have allowed many of the unique features of the town to be taken over by a neighboring town because of their “strict” enforcement of ridiculous codes and ideas.
Serves them right!
It could be worse, like fluorescent hot pink or chartreuse.
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BUT that picture is daytime. MAYBE it does ‘glow in the dark’.
Like a lot on here ‘glad not in my neighborhood’ but were it I wouldn’t be suing BUT it probably does ‘raise hell’ with property values..
(Wasn’t that supposedly the ‘cover story’ for HOA and City Ordinances because of cases like this and to keep them from happening?)
As much as we love to hate them, Dealing with this sort of “art” is what HOAs are good for.
House doesnt compliment van Goghs masterpiece imo. So I side with the city on aesthetics.
Its probably better to say the painted house was inspired by Van Goghs Starry Night."
Regardless, issue is filed under 1st Amendment-protected free speech applied to the states through 14th Amendment.
hideous
They should use some of their settlement to fix up their crappy yard.
“””””My friend used to live just down the street from the Beer Can House in Houston. “”””””””””””””””
I saw a show a few years ago that I think was about Houston. No zoning restrictions. you could have a house on one lot, a manufacturing plant on the next and an amusement park next to that. Basically, do whatever you want.
Ha!!
They did this to make the house easy to find by their autistic son.
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Further...
That was the original reason, they painted the wall for that recognition purpose BUT they were told the wall had to match the house so they painted the house, now they match.
B Clinton taught ‘us’ so much about the splicing and dicing of words and using them to our own advantage
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I wouldn’t want to live next to that horrendous thing but the city was wrong.
Not what I would do, but they own the place, so they have every right to do it.
This would never be approved by our HOA. For even a different shade of paint for window trim, we’ve to get approval from the Architectural Committee of HOA.
Code-enforcement types and their enablers (like you perhaps?) are why I moved out to the country, and why my house and barns are hidden behind an 8-acre buffer of trees.
See post #54.
Meanwhile, cities like Reno, Nevada, have a MONTH LONG ‘ART TOWN’ party, and murals are painted all over the place, including CHALK ART on sidewalks near the Atlantis Casino.
90% of it is garbage, IMO....
I wonder what this mayor calls the gang graffitti that infests any population area over 300 people.
If eggs were thrown at it would anybody notice?
Bully for you. I’m hardly a code-enforcer or enabler, I just think it looks bad. I too live in the country. Good day.
That’s the only van Gogh painting I like. But it sure is dreadful on a house!
Given that copyright is essentially perpetual these days, a couple of hundred years from now, such a situation may indeed be possible.
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